Scraps Of Mind

Ross Ryan…my name means horse

Went along to a great gig on Friday and I thought I’d share it with you. A friend of mine, Ross Ryan teamed up with Spectrum for a terrific night in the upstairs bar at the Trades Hall in Melbourne.

Ross is a well known performer in Australia from the 70s and 80s. Back in the 80s he parted company with his record company EMI, and unfortunately they got to retain ownership to all of his published material at that time. But now, in a watershed negotiation achieved by the legendary (or should that be mythical?) Virtual Publicity Maven Ms Connie Person, a deal has been struck with Aztec Music, EMI and Coathanger (Ross’s company) to re-release his classic My Name Means Horse album. And of course this includes his trademark song I am Pegasus

Thirty three and a third years after its original vinyl release, Coathanger and Aztec Music are proud to announce that Ross Ryan’s classic album, ‘My Name Means Horse’ is now available on CD.

Issued in the wake of the impossibly huge 1973-74 hit single ‘I Am Pegasus’, the ‘Horse’ album earned Ross three gold records; was voted Album of the Year and was only kept from the top of the LP charts by some guy called Neil Diamond and his since long forgotten ‘Hot August Night’.

From the Ross Ryan site

At the same time Ross’s old touring partners Spectrum (who have been together since the 70s under a variety of names) are also releasing their Spectrum Part 1 album. So the guys all decided to get together and have a dual CD launch.

Well the venue was an upstairs function hall/bar in a heritage listed building, complete with heritage listed paint flaking off the wall. A grungy vibe with surreal overtones as the hall was decked around with all the different union banners and posters. But it all added up to a really great atmosphere, believe it or not.

I loved Ross’s set with songs not only from the Horse album but also from his current 1 Person Queue album so he really mixed it up with the eras. He performed some of my favourites; Orchestra Ladies, 606, Blood on the Microphone and of course I am Pegasus. And he threw in some of his contemporary stuff with Chase the Ghosts Away and Cool River from the 1PQ album. it was great. I loved it. It’s been a while since I had the opportunity to see him play live. He is a great live act. Has a wonderful connection with his audience and a great style of chat. If you’d like a taste of the evening, Thatch was trying out a new little toy he just bought and his review, together with a sample, is on DugguP

Spectrum put on a great set too. With some edgy 70s techno rock. And although I really enjoyed it in a pub style venue with a couple of drinks under my belt, I have to say it’s not really my style of music to listen to in any other sort of setting.

All round it was a great night, good friends, good laughs, good music. What more could you ask for?

So if you’re interested in hearing more of what Ross sounds like, head on over to his 1PQ site and pick up the two free MP3 singles he has on offer. If you like what you hear you can buy both the 1PQ CD and the Horse CD direct from the site. Let me know what you think.

Words to Live by

Use your precious moments to live life fully
every single second of every single day.

Marcia Weder

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest Blog of all?

This post is about Blog presentation. And frankly I’m a bit nervous to be writing about this topic. Let’s face it, the look and feel of your blog is a very personal thing. And many of you are Scrapbookers so it’s even more of a personal thing. So let me state up front:

This post is aimed at highlighting points to consider if your presentation is focussed on your audience rather than on your own preferences. If you write your blog purely for your own purposes and are not really concerned about ‘reader friendly’ aspects then this post is probably not going to interest you.

Having read a number of articles on blog design from professional bloggers like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse I thought it might be helpful to pull some of the fundamental items on presentation together.

Now these guys blog about blogging with a focus on making money from blogging. I realise that this is not what most of us are about, so I’m not advocating that we all jump on their ‘business focussed’ bandwagon in how we design our own blogs. But many of the fundamental presentation principles are worth considering for our own personal blogs if we want them to appeal to a broader audience.

The majority of us use a template or blog skin chosen from a limited range provided by our blog platform provider. I have recently moved my blog to my own Scraps of Mind domain where I have a huge range of templates to choose from and I’m blessed with a daughter who can hack the code to tweak them further to suit my needs. But I realise that most of you just have the free templates to choose from with a limited amount of customisation available to you.

Presentation factors to consider:

1. Contrast.Try to ensure there is good contrast between your text colour and your background. For some reason black text on a white background is far easier to read than white text on a black background. And some of the other colour combinations in the various templates can also be challenging to read. You need a crisp contrast between background and text.
2. Font. Try to ensure that you choose a font style and size that is easy to read on a screen. The prevailing wisdom says that serif fonts (ones with the little sticking out bits on the letters, like Times New Roman) are better for reading on paper and sans-serif (clean lines like Arial or Lucida) are easier to read on the screen. As a visually challenged person I do find it a struggle to read the text on many blogs I visit. And I assume I am not alone.
   My ‘old’ Scraps of Mind blog had a larger font than my current template. I’m still a bit iffy on whether the reduced font size is a good idea. I’d love to know if any of my readers would prefer me to upsize my font again or if this one is OK for you.
3. White space. It is a whole lot easier to read a long post if there are some ‘visual pauses’ in it. Use white space to create these pauses and break your your text to make it easier on the eye. Your reader will have a better chance of absorbing your information if their eyes can take it in through smaller chunks. So make sure there are gaps between your paragraphs. And try to keep to short paragraphs where possible.
4. Use graphics to break up your text. For many of our posts this is not too difficult, given that most of us are into scrapbooking and photography. But sometimes your post doesn’t have a picture to break it up. I have found the blockquote feature on my template to be quite useful to bring a little visual variety into my ‘all text’ posts. Dot points are another tool you can use or even some careful use of bold or italics. The eye loves variety. As long as you don’t go overboard you can bring a bit of this into the most wordy of posts.
5. Sidebar. Whether your template has one or two sidebars. Give some thought to how your arrange your sidebar widgets. The information you consider most important should go ‘above the fold’. Above the fold refers to the area that your reader sees when they first load your blog; before they start scrolling. What you consider to be the most important information may be different to someone else but try to ensure that it sits above the fold in your side bar.

A good test is to think about which blogs that you find easy to read and think about why that is so. I hope this is one of them. Although there’s still a long journey to go to improve it. Any suggestions for improvement from you would be more than welcome.

Please feel free to add your own additions to this list on improving blog presentation in the comments. I’m sure all readers (including myself) would appreciate them.

So to sum up. Your blog is about you. It belongs to you and needs to be what you want. But if you are seeking to make it easier for your readers to read your content then it might be worthwhile giving some of these points your consideration.

Other related posts:

Blog Post Titles – make them meaningful
Link up your Blog
Blogging 101

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